Mahaney Arts Center 125

Lecture presented by Anne Goodyear, co-director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and co-author of This is A Portrait if I Say So: Identity in American Art, 1912 to Today. Goodyear will discuss how portraiture evolved largely as a genre based on mimesis to one stressing conceptual and symbolic associations between artist and subject. Artists considered range from Georgia O’Keeffe and Marcel Duchamp to Jasper Johns and Yoko Ono. Cosponsored by the Middlebury College Museum of Art, the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and the Director of the Arts. Free

Jessica Levin Martinez, director of the Division of Academic and Public Programs at the Harvard Art Museums, discusses new spaces and strategies for teaching and learning at the museums, which reopened in the fall of 2014 after a major renovation and expansion. She also addresses public programs that encourage collaboration with campus and community partners. Sponsored by the Middlebury College Museum of Art, Museum Studies Enrichment Fund, Education Studies, and the Art History program. Free

To commemorate World AIDS Day and Visual AIDS 2016 Day With(out) Art, the Middlebury College Museum of Art screens Visual AIDS’s COMPULSIVE PRACTICE, a 65-minute video compilation of compulsive, daily, and habitual practices by nine artists and activists who live with their cameras as one way to manage, reflect upon, and change how they are deeply affected by HIV/AIDS. COMPULSIVE PRACTICE will demonstrate the place of technology, self-expression, critique, and community in the many decades and the many experiences of artists and activists living with AIDS. Please note that seating is limited.

George H. Marcus, art historian at the University of Pennsylvania and former director of publications at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is coauthor of Landmarks of Twentieth Century Design (1993) and monographs on Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, and Fifties Design. His talk is sponsored by the Middlebury College Museum or Art and the Departments of French and Japanese in conjunction with the exhibition Deco Japan on view at the Museum through April 24. Free

For Middlebury College students: Seeking singer/actor/dancers and instrumentalists for the jazzy Broadway hit Chicago, this year’s Winter Term musical. Instrumentalists will audition at a later date; info will be forthcoming—please let us know if you are interested. For audition requirements and info, contact Carol Christensen at christen@middlebury.edu, or Doug Anderson at executivedirector@townhalltheater.org.

News channels broadcast chaotic scenes from Cairo, Damascus, and Kabul to millions of people, increasing awareness of Islamic sites and cultures in North Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East while simultaneously contributing to erroneous public assumptions about a monolithic Islam hostile to art. Islamic art historian and museum curator Leslee Michelsen discusses the changing role that contemporary museums play in curating and interpreting Islamic art amidst the socio-political realities of the 21st century.

Edward Shaughnessy, distinguished professor in early Chinese studies at the University of Chicago, discusses the casting and inscription of a Western Zhou dynasty bronze vessel called the Shi Wang Ding, acquired by the Chicago Institute of Art in 2005. This lecture considers both the dating of the vessel and the significance of the casting technique for the presentation of writing in ancient China.

For more than a thousand years, the Tale of Genji has captured the imagination of writers and artists. In 1970 Genji appeared in one of its newest iterations—Japanese manga comics. Lynn Miyake, Professor of Japanese at Pomona College, offers an illustrated lecture on the range of manga interpretations and the ancient tale’s interpretive richness. Sponsored by the Middlebury College Museum of Art, Department of Japanese Studies, East Asian Studies Program, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Program, and the Christian A.

Professor Kirin Narayan of the School of Culture, History, and Language at Australian National University will give a public lecture on Vishwakarma, a Hindu deity traditionally associated with the creative processes of making the material world. Elaborated through very different iconographies, genealogies, and rituals in different regions of India, his worship was once confined to craftsmen who view him as a primordial ancestor, honor him through tools, and pray to him for inspiration and success.

Jeehee Hong, Associate Professor of East Asian Art History at McGill University and current Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, examines representations of grief in Chinese middle-period (9th-14th centuries) funerary contexts. Hong shows that fictional or localized mourners were “inserted” into monuments to transmit corporeal and raw emotions. Sponsored by the Department of History, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Middlebury College Museum of Art, and the Program in East Asian Studies.  Free